Dessert minus the guilt (sort of): These 2 brands just launched ice cream flavors with reduced sugar and calories

Photo: Coconuts Media
Photo: Coconuts Media

Indulging in desserts typically means accepting the inevitable: exercise. Time to work up a sweat to burn off all those calories you ingested. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if you could have every spoonful of ice cream you damn well please, and not wallow in guilt from all the sugar and fat you just put your system through?

Enter Callery’s, a new local company that claims its pints are Singapore’s “first premium reduced-calorie ice cream.” The objective here is to offer dessert lovers healthier options, which is why its three flavors are lower in sugar, fat, and caloric content than other brands. Like, a lot lower.

Photo: Callery’s
Photo: Callery’s

Right on the packaging, it states that the vanilla ice cream — made with single-origin beans from Indonesian farms — only has 59 calories per serving, with 77 percent less calories, sugar, and fat. If you’re more of a strawberries and cream kind of person, the flavor, made with local fruits, takes up 61 calories of your daily intake per serving. Meanwhile, chocoholics will have to be content with a higher number, since the Belgian dark chocolate has 72 calories per serving, but hey, at least it’s 72 percent less sugar and fat than your average regular ice cream.

To achieve its reduced sugar level, the ice cream is sweetened with erythritol, a polyol found in plants and fruits that apparently possesses almost no calories.

Naturally, with such diet-friendly numbers, something else has to give — and admittedly, these are nowhere near as rich, creamy, or satisfying as full fat ice cream. But if you can live with the compromise, Callery’s is available at all NTUC Fairprice Finest outlets at $16.90 per pint.

Photo: Swensen's
Photo: Swensen’s

Elsewhere, a familiar name is also venturing into weight watchers’ territory with its new range of ice cream that’s also lower in sugar levels. Revamping the same three classic flavors the brand has been churning throughout its lifespan — chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla — the skinny Swensen’s offers up to 39 percent less sugar in its frozen treats, using isomaltulose as a sugar replacement.

Sure, these aren’t gonna take the place of Swensen’s banana splits or Earthquakes in our hearts, but at least they go for the same price as the regular range — $4.50 for a single scoop and $7.50 for double scoops. We’ll leave you to decide if the trade off is actually worth the depleted calories.



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